Founding member of the Rhapsodizers Clark Vreeland returns to Snug Harbor March 13 to play in New Orleans after a decadelong hiatus. He’s bringing with him his latest project, Spanky and the Love Handles, but he promises a retrospective show that will include some of the musicians he used to perform with, including David Torkanowsky, Ed Volker and Spencer Bohren.
A stripped-down blues band made up of Vreeland, his wife Beth, Bob Rice, and Sidney Cox, Spanky and the Love Handles is Vreeland’s return to center stage after years of producing and playing with other bands. “I had been traveling around the East Coast with this group called Code Blue for about 15 years. [After] the other writer in that group died about three years ago, I started working with my wife, Beth, and we put this together, and it took off.” The band has also recorded a new album, Hot Glazed Funky Dunk.
Vreeland began adding different elements, but kept taking them away again, instead preferring simple beats and instrumentation to the big group sound of his previous bands.
“We picked up a trumpet player from Miami, but we really just had a bass, drums, and a guitar,” he says. “When we would try and add something else it would get too busy.”
A current resident of Georgia right outside Atlanta, he never stops thinking about coming back home to play.
“I always think about coming home and playing at places, but I lose track of what places to play. The last place I played was House of Blues, and that was probably at least 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago. I got burnt on trying to figure out the bars.”
The exodus of many of his friends to the outskirts of the city also affected his visits.
“It makes it difficult for me,” he says. “Last time I was in, I couldn’t divide myself between being in town and going back over to Covington.”
Demonstrating the typical New Orleans musician’s appetite for experimentation, Vreeland has jumped from band to band between taking time to focus on his visual art, which is displayed in galleries and private collections around New Orleans and Atlanta. Toss in a side of foot-in-mouth syndrome, and Vreeland has understandably been absent from the New Orleans music scene.
“I’m not that great at the business,” he says. “I have a really bad habit of saying the wrong things to club owners, agents. I’m not trying to be rude; I just don’t say the right things.”
